The use of touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices for computers and other electronic computing devices has increased significantly in recent years. Exemplary touch-sensitive surfaces include touchpads and touch-screen displays. Such surfaces are widely used to manipulate user interface objects on a display.
Exemplary user interface objects include digital images, video, text, icons, control elements such as buttons and other graphics. Exemplary manipulations include adjusting the position and/or size of one or more user interface objects or activating buttons or opening files/applications represented by user interface objects, as well as associating metadata with one or more user interface objects or otherwise manipulating user interfaces. Certain manipulations of user interface objects are associated with certain types of touch inputs, which are referred to as gestures.
Such surfaces, in conjunction with sensors capable of detecting intensity of contacts, can be used to detect advanced gestures (e.g., intensity-dependent gestures). However, users who are not familiar with such gestures may spend a long time to learn how devices will respond to such gestures. In addition, applications that respond to a same advanced gesture differently present additional challenges to such users. When devices perform unintended operations due to a user's erroneous use of an advanced gesture, the user needs to cancel such operations and provide inputs again. These manipulations are cumbersome and tedious. In addition, having to undo unintended operations and providing inputs again take longer than necessary, thereby wasting energy. This latter consideration is particularly important in battery-operated devices. Thus, it would be desirable to have a framework for processing advanced gestures.